What? Another RPG already! I don't know why, but I've been playing a fair number of RPGs lately. Maybe the slower pace is more appealing to me in my advancing years, haha. Anyway, although I've gotten through the Paper Mario games at a decent rate, it's taken me a long time to get back to the second game in the Mario & Luigi series, called Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and released for the DS at the end of 2005.

It's been many years since I'd played this game's predecessor, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, but even with the elapsed time the game felt overly familiar. Partners in Time makes use of the DS's extra buttons, and so instead of one button being used for Mario's attacks and one for Luigi's as in the first game, in this game the DS's added two face buttons (X and Y) are used for Baby Mario and Baby Luigi. The babies are a fun new addition, but most of the quartet's field moves are pretty much the same as in the previous game. The battle mechanics are pretty much the same as the previous game as well, although the special items you can use in battle (replacing the Bros. Attacks from the previous game) do make pretty good use of the fact there are four characters in your group. The game also makes pretty good use of the DS's two screens: at times each screen shows the two pairs of brothers in separate locations, and at other times one screen displays a map which is helpful for showing your progress through an area.

The story and characters have the same slapstick humor of the first game, although the game gets to feel quite repetitive by the time you've gotten the last of the bros' abilities. Additionally, as in the first game boss battles tend to drag on. I was pretty bored by the time I got near the end of the game and so I didn't quite finish it, but I'm looking forward to the next game, Bowser's Inside Story, which is regarded as a high point in the series. As usual, mariowiki.com is a great resource for info about the game and most other Mario-related topics.

SimCity is a highly regarded game that I've been trying to get motivated to spend more time with for ages. I have vague recollections of playing the game in a computer class in middle school as a pseudo-academic activity, but I didn't really remember anything about it. I played the SNES version, which was actually developed by Nintendo and adds fun Nintendo touches, like Bowser replacing Godzilla as a possible disaster, advice from "Dr. Wright" (an in-game rendering of actual SimCity creator Will Wright), regular unlockable gifts when hidden objectives are accomplished, and a Mario statue awarded for getting the highest city type (Megalopolis).

I know that plenty of people love this game, but even after playing it for several hours I still don't really see the appeal. The basic premise of the game is at its essence much like Conway's Game of Life, where the tiles you place succeed or fail based on what it's connected to and similar factors (e.g. how far away is the nearest police station, the balance of industrial vs. commercial vs. residential areas, etc.). Unlike Conway's Game, however, in SimCity you don't see the immediate effects of your decisions, and a lot of your time is spent just literally waiting for the next year to roll around so you can collect more money to build more stuff. I imagine with the infinite money cheat the game would be a bit more fun, but as it is I quickly got bored waiting for the months to tick by. You can use some of that time to peruse the plethora of charts and maps that help you track how your city is doing, but that gets pretty boring as well. Building up areas wasn't that fun to me either, as it seems like building a grid and just repeating patterns over and over again is the surest (and most mindless) way to getting the best score/population.

While I was waiting, I spent time reading the manual, which is extensive. It seems like neither the manual nor the game dive into the deeper mechanics of how the game works, which might have helped make things a bit more interesting, although I suppose you can figure out some of them through careful observation over extended periods of time playing the game. The game feels more like a piece of software than a game, although you can make your experience more game-like by choosing scenarios. Scenarios start you off with an already developed city and then a disaster strikes, and you're tasked with repairing the damage. This didn't appeal to me either, as there aren't really any rewards for success of penalties for failure.

I'm glad I finally can cross this one off my list, although this makes me a little warier of tackling other highly regarded games in the genre, such as the Civilization series. Those games seem to have more variables to control and things to do and a much wider range of events that occur, so I'll try to keep an open minded when I get around to trying those games out.

I know I just said something similar in my last post, but I can't believe it's already been almost six and a half years since I've picked up a Contra game. I ended up skipping ahead and trying out Contra Rebirth, which was part of a trio of Konami releases on WiiWare that revisited classic franchises. All three games seem to have gotten a positive reception, and Contra Rebirth definitely feels like a great homage to a classic series.

Contra Rebirth has all the great over-the-top run 'n gun action of the original games, and Contra super fans will probably recognize more of the references to previous games than I did. There are plenty of boss fights, and the first boss of the first game has another cameo in this game. Being able to hang from bars and climb up walls returns from previous games, and the game features a total of four playable characters (all play identically and two are unlockable) that will also be familiar to fans of the series.

I was thrown off by the fact you can't run and gun at the same time, although this isn't the first time a Contra game has gone with that design. There's no need for the Konami code since you can adjust the number of lives in the settings, and you get unlimited continues. The game only includes five stages, but on the normal difficulty it's still a decent challenge. There are three difficulty levels to start with, and beating the hard mode unlocks "nightmare" mode, which has an interesting mechanic. According to GameFAQs, in this mode "any enemy that you destroy will shoot a blue ring projectile in your direction, and the more enemies you kill, the more blue rings will spread all across the screen, which will make it harder to avoid the attacks."

WiiWare had some great games, and Contra Rebirth is definitely one of them, so much so that I would rank it at the top of my list of favorite WiiWare games. Contra games are fun in general and there's nothing like mowing down hordes of enemies with the spread gun with a buddy fighting alongside you. Of the Contra games I've played, Contra Rebirth is one of the best. It's colorful, full of action and fun, and has a nice set of options (and unlimited continues!).

Yowzers, has it really been eight years since I last played a Wario platformer? I'd played through the previous Wario games at a pretty good pace (the previously most recent of which was Wario Land 4 on GBA), but it's taken me this long to finally finish the next Wario game, Wario World for GameCube. I have some affection for the character, but I suppose part of the problem is that the game was developed by Treasure rather than Nintendo. As a result, the game lacks the typical sunny and cartoony Nintendo aesthetic and opts for weirdness and creepiness instead, which I found off-putting (although I like Treasure as a developer in general).

3-D platformers don't really appeal to me that much in general since I didn't grow up with them. They also tend to be big collectathons, and although Wario World isn't nearly as bad as most, you'll definitely need to look in every nook and cranny to find every collectible. I've gotten to enjoy this type of exploration more over the years, and although each level feels distinct, the game is a bit repetitive. The game consists of several types of gameplay. There's the typical large-level exploration you'd expect with a game like this, and in these sections the focus is on exploring and brawling rather than platforming. Then there are small puzzle rooms that require a combination of brains and dexterity in order to collect the reward at the end of them. There are also self-contained platforming sections over a bottomless pit, very reminiscent of Super Mario Sunshine in general, although in this game you're given unlimited chances to get to the end. These platforming challenges suffer from all the problems of most 3-D platformers, namely, a manual camera that can be frustrating at times, and difficulty in judging distance and mastering the game's physics.

The exploration sections are pretty fun, except there's very little enemy variety. Basically there are three types of enemies in the whole game, and the levels just re-skin them with minor tweaks to their behavior. The other big complaint I have about these sections is that instead of losing a life when you fall into a pit, you're forced to go to an area (different for every level) where you have to avoid enemies and hit open boxes until you find the random one that has the spring that propels you back to the regular stage. These sections are a huge bore, and really put the brakes on any momentum in exploring. The puzzle rooms are generally fun, but the platforming sections can get a bit tedious, especially since in this game the platforming is often based on mastering the mechanics of the game's physics rather than just requiring strategy and good timing. I find 3-D platforming to not be nearly as immediately gratifying as 2-D platforming in general anyway, and this game doesn't change my opinion of that.

The locales are a bit more varied than a lot of other similar games, and there are some nice twists in the levels, such as one that has areas where you can't see yourself and have to rely on a mirror's reflection instead. The final stage, a large and elaborate pyramid that you have to climb up the exterior of, was also a highlight, although the platforming sections in that level in particular were tedious and frustrating. As with other Treasure games there are plenty of boss and mid-boss fights, but although they're generally enjoyable, I wouldn't say they're particularly brilliant in this game.

Overall I enjoyed Wario World, so much so that I actually completed it 100%. There were some really tedious and frustrating moments, however, and the lack of enemy variety really hurts the game. The game doesn't connect to the Mario or Wario games at all, and it had been a game that didn't feature Wario it might have left a slightly better impression. As it is I'm glad that I'm finally finished with it and can get back to a more traditional 2-D Wario platforming experience.

I'm probably one of the few people who played and enjoyedThruSpace, a downloadable title on Wii. The game is a unique puzzle game where you're given Tetris-like shapes that zoom down corridors and you're tasked with spinning them to fit through holes in walls in your path. Sounds wacky and very Japanese, but the mechanics were fun and the sleek post-Lumines aesthetic worked well. Although it's pretty easy to get through levels just by fitting the piece through the holes, the real fun comes from moving and rotating the piece multiple times to cover the entire hole, earning a "trick" that nets you many more points and a multiplier, if you can manage to sustain it.

I've been looking forward to playing its sequel, Ketzal’s Corridors (aka SpeedThru: Potzol’s Puzzle) on 3DS ever since I finished ThruSpace, but have only gotten around to it now. At its core Ketzal’s Corridors is pretty much the same game as ThruSpace, but with many notable enhancements. The most obvious one is that the game trades in the sleek and minimalistic design of the original for a cool Aztec-inspired design instead. There's a minimal story involving a good and a bad deity yadda yadda, but the trappings actually help improve the gameplay because rather than each game piece being made up of simple blocks, instead they've shaped them to look like animals. This should help newbies more quickly get a handle on how the three game pieces in the main game rotate, although this is most apparent for the three unlockable larger game pieces which go a step further and are made up of three colors rather than just one.

The stereoscopic 3D of the 3DS is ideal for this game, and enhances the gameplay. There are new modes, including multiplayer modes, one of which you can play with two people on the same 3DS (one person using the left side of the controls and the other person using the right side). The scoring system is much improved in that tricks are scored in a more logical way. The game is structured so that each of the three main pieces is featured on three maps. The maps have the same layout, and there are a variety of regular stages where you have to get through a set number of walls (some of which have moving hazards you'll have to avoid that will slow you down if you bump into them), as well as endless modes, modes where you're just required to rotate the shapes without steering, and stages that feature larger, more unusually shaped pieces. Each stage has requirements for earning bronze, silver, and gold medals, and on top of that in the regular stages you can also earn extra recognition for obtaining every heart and not missing any tricks (i.e. getting a full combo).

I'm happy to be able to report that Ketzal’s Corridors really fulfills the promise of its predecessor and provides almost everything you'd want from a sequel. The game has a new coat of paint, new modes, new challenges, and tons of replayability in the form of medals to earn. The game does have one downside compared to the original, though, which is that since the 3DS has less buttons than the Wii controller you can only rotate right and not left. Even aside from this, the game just misses making it to my favorite games of all time list. Much as I enjoyed it, it's not quite as epic a puzzler as the best of them, but I'll definitely be trying for more gold medals and I'm definitely hoping that there are more sequels to further explore the fun core gameplay.